As Cooley Law School’s associate dean of experiential learning and practice prep, and serving as Professor, Tracey W. Brame works closely with the dean on projects involving student support, community relations, and campus growth. Directing of the Innoccnet Project is an important leadership role!. Ms. Brame came to the law school in 2006 from Legal Aid of Western Michigan, where she was a staff attorney.
Full Transcript:
Shelley Irwin: Welcome to Powerful Woman Let's Talk. I'm Shelley Irwin and today we are speaking with Cooley Law School's Associate Dean of Experiential Learning and Practice Preparation and Professor Tracey W. Brame. Tracey directs the Innocence Project and is an important leader with her many roles. She came to the law school in 2006 from Legal Aid of Western Michigan where she was a staff attorney and there's more, but let's hear from you. Hello, Tracey.
Tracey Brame: Hi, how are you this afternoon?
SI: I’m doing fine, good to have you here and talk about you as a powerful woman. And I ask you a blunt question, how'd you get to be so powerful?
TB: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here and an honor to be considered a powerful woman. Part of it is just time. I've been at what I'm doing for 30 years. And so hopefully I have been able to learn some things and gain some influence over the years and be impactful. So part of it has just been dedication to the field that I chose or to which I was called.
SI: Why did you choose this field?
TB: So I originally wanted to be a sportscaster. So I was in my prior life, I'm an avid avid sports fan. I still love to this day to watch sports. My son is a Division I athlete. But when I was in college, I went to college at the University of Michigan, and I started to study political science. I ended up as a political science major and really became interested in social justice issues. I went to college in the late 80s and early 90s, and I wanted to do something to give back to my inner-city Detroit community where I grew up. And I thought that law school might be a good way to give me that opportunity.
SI: And it proved that it did.
TB: It did. And I wanted to be a prosecutor, I thought. I grew up in inner city Detroit at a time when there was a lot of crime and drugs were a big issue. And I thought I wanted to go clean up the streets in my neighborhood. But then when I went to law school, we had a speaker in one of my classes named Brian Stevenson, who does an incredible amount of civil rights and human rights work and he was just a young lawyer at the time and he came to talk to us about the death penalty and the racial justice work that he did and I said whatever he's doing that's what I want to do.
SI: What did it take to do that?
TB: Yeah, that's a good question. So I mentioned the word commitment earlier. I really think, and this is going to sound trite, but I really think that that path or that profession chose me. I remember in law school, I had a professor who encouraged me to consider being a prosecutor because she said, you need good prosecutors in your community and you can really do good work. And I told her then, and I really believed it, that I thought I was really called to be a defense attorney, that my disposition, that my predilection was to help people who found themselves embroiled in the criminal justice system who didn't have a voice, didn't have resources, et cetera. So I really found that that was a driver. So the actual work of it, I love law school. I was a super nerd. I would go back and do it again. I love the study of it. And it might be hindsight talking. But law school, the bar exam, all of those things were hard on their own right for all the reasons you could imagine. But I was so driven to do the work that it just, you know. It just happened, right.
SI: Talk to me a little bit, Tracy, about your work with legal aid. What was the challenge, a surprise, maybe a thrill?
TB: So yeah, I started legal aid when I came to Grand Rapids for the first time in 2003. Before that, I had been in Detroit and then in Washington, D.C. doing criminal defense work, public defender work. And when I moved to Grand Rapids, I decided to do a little bit, something a little bit different and do a little family law and work at Legal Aid. And it was nice because I was still working on behalf with people of little means, right? So I still felt like I was impacting community. But I was surprised, I guess a couple of things. First of all, the difference between family law and criminal law was considerable. So I thought that it'd be a little calmer and I'd leave my criminal practice for a while and do something a little calmer. It was different, but it was not calmer. It was people at very high emotions, very high. So that was interesting to me. But the other thing was what was very satisfying , a little surprising and very satisfying in legal aid, is just how the knowledge that I had accumulated, even as a young lawyer, could be so important and so helpful to the average person, right? So just the fact that I had gone to school and learned these things, or even just learned how to find them, because it wasn't that, it's not that I have all the law in my head, but even knowing the process, right? And knowing where to find information and how to bring forth information was literally life-changing for some folks, just as simple as being able to extricate themselves from an abusive relationship, or being able to get their driver's license suspension lifted just those things that were maybe small to me could be life changing to someone else. And so that's why I love legal aid to this day. The work that those lawyers do is amazing. Some of it is complex litigation and some of it, like I said, is just walking alongside people in everyday matters.
SI: Hopefully it made you sleep well at night knowing you did something good for someone. Why your niche in the death penalty?
TB: Yeah, like I was saying a few minutes ago, I did not anticipate working in that area at all, but it really was law school, really was Bryan Stevenson. He runs the Equal Justice Initiative now. He was a speaker in one of my classes, and then I had the great fortune to go and work for him for a semester. So I worked down in Montgomery, Alabama as an intern in his office, helping on death penalty cases. And again, that's where my kind of passion for being a public defender came from. They're just realizing that most of the folks that we worked, the vast majority of people that we worked with there, were poor, could not afford counsel. You know, were just really disadvantaged when it came to speaking up for themselves and arguing their cases. And, and I really wanted to kind of do something about that both on an individual level in cases and then, you know, on a systemic level. And, and of course, death penalty is the ultimate sanction. And, and it's something that's irrevocable. So that really spoke to me. When I came back to Michigan, fortunately, Michigan does not have the death penalty. And so I did not do that work when I came back here. But I continue working on behalf of indigent defendants.
SI: Tell me about the Innocence Project.
TB: So, yeah, so I really kind of came full circle. As I look back, sometimes when people introduce me, I find my introductions are getting longer and longer, right? So you ask what, you know, how'd you get so powerful just by kind of living long enough in part, right? So I've kind of come full circle. I spent the first 10 years or so of my life as a criminal defense attorney. And then I kind of wandered around Cooley for the last 20 years. And it's been a wonderful experience. I've done administrative things at the school. I've taught electives, taught substantive courses, run clinics, all while I raised my kids for the last 18 years. Oh, there's that too. My oldest is 18, there's that too, right? So Cooley has been wonderful because it allowed me to have just a wonderful career working with students and incredible colleagues doing good work, but also kind of having the space to raise my kids. My son is a freshman in college, and my daughter's a junior in high school. So when I had the opportunity to go to the Innocence Project, I said, OK, I think I have the time again to dive into this work. And it was much of it felt like home to me, right, because it was representing indigent people who are incarcerated and claiming, you know, they're innocent, etc. But some of it was new to me in the sense that our clinic focuses on DNA and forensics, and that was an area that I had not done much work in. And so it was good. It's keeping me young, kind of learning a whole another discipline, right? Learning all about DNA evidence and how that can be used in post conviction work. So I love the Innocence Project. It's a beautiful community. It's really grown over the last 20 or 30 years. Our clinic is part of a nationwide Innocence Network. We have conferences every spring where people come together to talk about this work. Advances in forensics as well as more education of lawmakers and people in the community have just led to an increase in exonerations as well as more cooperation from prosecutor offices. So it's just a wonderful time to be doing this work. It's not easy. A lot of our clients have been incarcerated for years, sometimes decades. They're traumatized. They're anxious. They're impatient, all of the justifiably so. So the work is not easy, but I have a phenomenal young staff and I think it's a great way to, as I look toward, you know, at some point closing out this chapter of my career, it's a great way to do that.
SI: Kind of look forward to what you're going to do next. As we speak, Associate Dean of Experiential Learning and Practice Preparation, tell us more about your students.
TB: So yes, so I, one of the things I do administratively at the school is that in addition to running the instance project, I am responsible for the clinical department. at the clinic department, at the school, as well as the externships and things of that nature. So I have the opportunity to interact with students who are coming out of the classroom and taking advantages of opportunities to actually work in practice, whether they're going off campus to do an externship at a law firm or whether they are participating in one of the several clinics that we have at Cooley. So the Innocence Project is also a clinic, so I have students every semester in that favorite part of my job. I teach a wrongful convictions course on Wednesday evenings this semester and it's just not even like work. I get to spend 6 o'clock to 8 o'clock every Wednesday with 20 of my favorite people this semester talking about really important issues. When I look around at everything that our nation and our world is facing, it can be really overwhelming sometimes. But then I mean this when I say I spend time with our students and it makes me feel hopeful about the future, right, of community and country. No matter what they end up doing, no matter their political stripes, they are just so energetic and hungry to learn and interested in, you know, in serving. So I absolutely love working with, with young people. And I've been doing it long enough now that I work alongside some of the folks that were my students early on and that that's going to be exactly so between, you know, the occasional opportunity to watch someone get released from prison who was innocent and then kind of watching my students kind of flourish in their space. I just feel like I'm just the luckiest woman I have. I just, I love what I do.
SI: Luck can come with hard work. And with awarding Michigan Lawyer of the Year by Michigan Lawyers Weekly, you received, what was that phone call like?
TB: That was a big surprise. It was surprising. And again, you know, again, I don't wanna. You know, I'd be much to my husband's chagrin. I'd be doing this work even if I wasn't paid for it, right? We went to law school together and he used to say, you know, you want to be a public defender, you could make so much money doing so many other, but I love doing this. And I feel the same thing about awards. Like I'm always a little taken aback when someone recognizes me in that way for doing what I do because I'm like, this is like, this is a Tuesday for me. So I am glad that folks find enough value in this space and this work, you know, to recognize those of us who are doing it. So more than anything else, more than any individual accolade for me, I think it's great recognition of the work itself. So I was, that was, my mom, however, was peacock proud. She was, she was over the moon.
SI: Let me show off my daughter, Tracey. Yes, she should. What do you say to the 13 year old who wants to be a Tracey brain?
TB: I think about that because I have a daughter who's not much older than that. And I could tell you what I tell her. Two most important things I tell her all the time is that you can do just about anything you want to do. Like, you are powerful and there have been decades and generations of women and African-Americans who've made that possible. So I want her to know that you can, right? It is there for you, believe that. And then the second thing that I would tell her is that you don't have to have it all figured out right now. That your gift will make room for you. That you just walk in the things that you love, the things that you're interested in, and just be confident. I tell my daughter all the time, just walk, just be confident, you have this. It's hard for 13-year-old Tracy to believe that, I know, because it's hard for my 13-year-old daughter to believe it, but that is the one thing that I would tell.
SI: What a role model. Now, do you and Kenyatta ever leave lawyer work away from the dinner table, or does it come up?
TB: Occasionally, and so we try. He actually works more in the business side of Cascade Engineering. So he likes to leave work at work, but I often come and regale him with stories from. So between that and raising our kids, we have quite the conversation on any given day.
SI: So full circle, you wanted to be a sports broadcaster.
TB: I wanted to be a sports broadcaster. And I, you know, I just might in a few years if I'm done with this, I... Oh.
SI: I say go for it. Tracy. You're a great example of that. Tracy Breen, thank you.
TB: Thank you so much for having me.
